You seem to be doing alright. Its best to invest in aggressive growth funds when you are younger because you have many years to recoup you losses if the market were to crash. You shouldn't worry about the short term with your investments in a 401K I would review your performance quarterly to annually to see where your investments are in regards to the market. If you are not comfortable with swings in the market you might want to invest a little more conservatively but I'll tell you that I've had good luck in the long term with aggressive growth stock mutual funds with a 5+ year track record of success.

Mike

You are still okay. I have taken some hits in the last couple of weeks too and I'm 33. The majority of my portfolio is also in higher risk investments. Personally, I would say that your investment choices are fine, but in all honesty, only you can decide how much risk you can stomach.

I would say that as long as your still in it for the long-term, you shouldn't worry about the downturn too much. It probably will continue to get worse over the next 9 months. You can put your money into a safer investment, but I wouldn't recommend it . That type of maneuvering is called market timing, and there are dozens of hypothetical simulation to show you that market timing doesn't really pay off, because most people never time it correctly.

My personal recommendation...just stick it out and try not to look at it too much over the next year. The same thing happened to my investments in 99/2000, and it was frustrating to watch, but my portfolio is better for it today.

Don't panic. Most funds have taken hits recently. Remember that retirement investing is long term and don't get too excited over market downturns - they happen.

If you're satisfied with the asset allocation you have, keep contributing. As with stocks, when funds are "down" you are in effect buying them "on sale."

At your age, riskier funds are appropriate -- you have time on your side.

But ... take a look at the quality of your funds. Are they at least Morningstar 3-star funds (using 5-year rating)? Are their management fees reasonable? (1.5% should be the absolute top.) Also, you should not be paying any commissions to purchase them.

Management fees are corrosive. Not a problem during good years, but they will turn bad years into disasters over time.

I've had sveral 401ks over the years. I started a new job last year, thus a new 401k trustee, and the funds in the new plan are terrible -- almost every fund has management fees in the 2-3% range, and almost every fund is mediocre. So at this employer, everything is going into an SP500 index fund which is not sexy but also the only thing they can't screw up (and happens to be the only fund with a sub-1% management fee).

(Just BTW, when I leave an employer, I have alwyas rolled my 401k to a discount brokerage like Fidelity or Schwab -- better funds, lower fees, etc. It's a mistake to roll 401k funds into a new employer's plan, although there are situations where keeping an old employer's plan is a good choice.)

The last thing is to look at asset allocation. You don't want funds that are overly focused on one industry -- gold funds do well some years, and horribly other years. You want big-picture funds that focus on growth or value. The only exception I would make here is that some sector funds seem good for long-term growth, like electronics or biotech, but even then I'd be cautious -- just ask anyone who's been in health care funds over the last decade.

What I do, is keep some in several different investments, and regular deposits dollar cost average it out, to reduce risk.

I am allowed 8 FREE transfers per year. I will never pay them to do a transfer.

When a fund shoots way up, I transfer the gains to a fixed income fund to prevent their loss.

and/or

When I fund shoots way up, I transfer part of it to a fund that went way down.

I don't do any transfers until I have held the fund(s) for at least 1 year.

You can't calculate the gains by seeing how much the fund has gone up, you have to calculate how much you paid total, and how much it is worth now.

Stay out of the funds that are a mixture of other funds, in some cases, you are paying multiple fund management fees.

they say you should have 100- your age as a percent invested in equity fund (stocks) - you should be at 68% - high risk means just that - you might have some great years, but when the market goes bad - you'll get hit harder too. bonds are doing better than stocks so far this year